GREEN BAY, Wis. (WFRV) – Brown County officials say they’ve reached an agreement to lease part of the former Pulliam Power Plant property to C. Reiss Terminals, LLC for 60 years.
This agreement paves the way for C. Reiss to no longer have to use the space along the Fox River near the Mason Street bridge for coal storage.
“At the end of the day it’s a really historic day in Brown County history,” Brown County executive Troy Streckenbach told Local 5 News.
The lease agreement comes after countless hours of discussions and negotiations between C. Reiss, Brown County, and Green Bay officials spread across several years. In February, the parties reached a major milestone when Brown County supervisors approved a 14-point agreement with C. Reiss that formed the framework for the finalized lease agreement.
Streckenbach said the finalized lease included a few tweaks, but in general followed the framework approved by the supervisors back in February. He said he’s proud that the county and C. Reiss were able to work together to get this done.
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“How we as a landlord and how C. Reiss as a tenant live together for the next 60 years, that takes time, it’s complicated, there’s a lot of different pieces to the puzzle,” Streckenbach said. “We’re left with a product that all of us can walk away and say we’re proud of it.”
The coal piles won’t be picked up and physically moved to their new location via boats or trucks. Instead, C. Reiss will use up all its coal at the current site near the Mason Street bridge and then begin dumping new coal at the new site.
The coal will go to the Fox Rivers Terminals and the salt that C. Reiss currently stores at the Fox Rivers Terminals will move to part of the former Pulliam Power Plant site.
“C. Reiss is pleased to have reached agreement with Brown County on a long-term lease for the northern section of the former Pulliam Plant site,” C. Reiss CEO Keith Haselhoff said in a statement. “This is an important step forward in the effort to expand capacity at the Port of Green Bay, facilitate the relocation of coal piles from the downtown Mason Street riverfront, and advance the community’s long-standing goal of redeveloping that site.”
It’s up to C. Reiss and the city of Green Bay to redevelop the current coal pile site near the Mason Street bridge once the coal is gone.
“We have a memorandum of understanding we signed with them that the northern 10 acres would be set aside for a mixed-use downtown development and then we’d allow for some clean, light industrial uses further to the south,” Green Bay mayor Eric Genrich told Local 5 News.
Genrich said mixed-use development would likely include some type of housing and river access. He also said they’re looking at potentially adding a train station for passenger trains. He said city officials have talked about the future of this piece of land, but that they don’t have any concrete plans yet because it’s very early in the process.
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“This community has been involved in a multi-decade push towards our natural resources, the Fox River and the Bay of Green Bay, and this project is a huge indication of where we’re going as a community,” Genrich said.
Rum Runners, a bar in the Shipyard District, backs up to the coal piles. One of the bars co-owners Jeff Hunter told Local 5 News they’re extremely excited to eventually see the coal move out of here.
“There are problems with having coal in your backyard and a lot of it has to do with the coal dust (forcing us) to clean things and maintenance (equipment gets ruined when there’s coal dust on it),” Hunter said.
Hunter emphasized that C. Reiss has been a good neighbor and he feels like they try to mitigate the impact of the coal as much as possible. He also said that the company sponsored the Shipyard District’s ‘All Bands on Deck’ festival last summer.
Hunter said it’d be great for business if the city and C. Reiss redevelops the property in to apartments or condos.
“Lots of different options for music and entertainment so we’re really excited about being able to showcase that for a whole bunch of new neighbors,” he said.
It will likely take several years for C. Reiss to use up all the coal at its current site and for the company to prepare the former Pulliam Power Plant and Fox River Terminals sites to store their coal and salt.
